Paul Haggis Rape Trial Opens With Accuser’s Text Messages: ‘I Kept Saying No’

thewrap.com:

The Associated Press. She said Breest finally went public when she saw Haggis condemning revelations about Harvey Weinstein.“The hypocrisy of it made her blood boil,” Salzman said.Haggis’ attorney, reading from that same text exchange, pointed out that Breest added “lol” when mentioning performing oral sex, and that she hoped to “see what happens” when she was alone with him again.“I don’t care too much,” defense attorney Priya Chaudhry read for the jury. “I just hope I don’t now have [professional] enemies.” Breest’s lawsuit caused three other women to come forward with similar sex assault allegations against the filmmaker.

While Breest is the only plaintiff in this case, their testimony of encounters between 1996 and 2015 will be included to support her claims.Haggis’ lawyer said she will show how Scientology helped cook up Breest’s lawsuit to smear him for leaving the church and becoming one of its most high-profile critics.

The prosecution scoffed at that theory.“Scientology has nothing to do with this case,” Salzman said – a position the Church of Scientology has strongly maintained.The church loomed in another celebrity rape trial this week – although from a very different angle – as prominent Scientologist Danny Masterson faces criminal sex assault charges in a Los Angeles court.

Though his lawyers won a hard-fought agreement from the judge that Scientology talk should be severely limited, Tuesday’s opening arguments focused almost squarely on the influence the church had on Masterson’s accusers, also Scientologists.But in New York, the accusers’ attorney kept the spotlight on Haggis’ alleged repeat behavior.“Mr.